The Cookie Agenda
by VladimirsAngel
Summary: When she discovers a scandalous locked-room mystery, Lupa thinks there's only one X-Man to blame...but is she right?


**THE COOKIE AGENDA**

_The X-Men were created by Marvel Comics and *bows* the great Stan Lee. This is a frivolous piece of X-Nonsense brought on by too much sugar. *struggles with packet* Open, damn you!!_

**_Xavier's School for The Gifted, _****_3:46p.m._****_:_**

"Damn!"

Rice grains showered out onto the floor in a cheerful rush, and Lupa d'Acosta frowned.

"Biscuits, biscuits, biscuits…"

She left the rice where it was and probed another arm into the cupboard, long fingers grasping at likely packets. 

"…chocolate ones."

"Problems?"

The voice from behind her sounded vaguely amused, and more than a little annoyed. 

"Nothing a little cookie wouldn't cure," said Lupa, despondently, "but I can't find mine."

Professor Xavier guided his chair forward a few inches and surveyed the mess on his kitchen floor with equanimity. 

"I hope you're going to clean that up, young lady…"

"Wait a minute!" 

Lupa bounced to her feet, ignoring the Professor's last comment. "Of course! I didn't leave them in here at all! I put them in my secret place! Locked away! Safe! Ha ha!"

She practically sprinted out of the room, long grey tail clipping a mug from the drainer as she went. Xavier glared at the mug as it shattered.

"Sometime soon I'm going to have a word with Kurt about his choice of friends…" He glanced up at the rack of chef's tools hanging above the oven. "Lupa? Have you taken the chef's oxy-acetylene torch again?_ Lupa_!"

"Biscuits for me, biscuits for me, bisc- Oh, hi, Remy…"

Gambit steadied Lupa as she almost ran straight into him.

"What's the hurry,_ chere_? Where's the fire?"

"No hurry. Nothing of your concern." Lupa shuffled one foot guiltily and didn't look at him. Remy grinned at her.

"I don't even like biscuits, _p'tite loup-garou_. I'm more a cream cake man. Just run along, before Kurt finds out. You know what he's like for cookies."

"Cookies, hah! If only it were just cookies…the amount of crap he eats, he should be roughly the size of Luxembourg by now." She sighed. "It's not fair. I eat one slice of pizza and go up a dress size – he eats two large pizzas and a side of chicken wings and can still swan around in circus spandex waving his tail at everyone."

She glanced up at the ceiling, apparently in case of furry blue eavesdroppers. "Gotta go, Remy. The sugar calls to me, it says, 'Lupa…Luuuuupa….'"

She rattled on up the stairs and vanished towards the attic. Gambit shook his head, chuckling, continued on his way, and upon entering the kitchen nearly fell headlong by slipping on rice that someone had carelessly spilt.

The secret room in the attic was Lupa's pride and joy. It hadn't always been hers: over the years, many students at Xavier's had first found the tiny, lockable room under the rafters and then claimed it as their own and hidden valuables there. The lock was beyond Ororo or Remy's skills at picking, and the door sat so close to its housing that only the thinnest credit card could have slipped between the jamb and the door itself. It was also made of very thick steel. 

Rumour had it that the little room had been used to hide Xavier when attacks were made on the mansion back in the old days, and indeed, the room was just big enough to allow a wheelchair inside – but not much else. If you were over 5'6 or so (Lupa was 5'10) you had to contort slightly to fit inside. 

Lupa turned the key and the door swung heavily open. The hinges creaked ominously, as if about to break.

"No!"

A few empty wrappers drifted gently to the floor with a teasing rustle.

"_Kurt!"_

Kurt Wagner was sat out on the lawn, doing nothing so much as sunbathing and enjoying the day, when Hurricane Lupa came out of the mansion full force and knocked him pointed ears over pointed tail.

"_Was?!"_

He rolled expertly, ending up in a defensive crouch, which was when Lupa grabbed the end of his tail and yanked, hard. "Yeowww!"

"Biscuit burglar! Teleporting tiffin thief!"

She let go the tail, grabbed his collar and glared at him, yellow eye to yellow eye. "Give them back! Or if you've already pigged them, buy me new ones. Or bake some, I don't care! Just do it now!"

"Lupa, _liebchen," said Kurt, easily recognising the symptoms, "did you not have your emergency __Schokoladen ration today? Would you like a glucose pill?"_

"I want my biscuits, you furry little reprobate, or I'll put Rogue's leg-wax strips on your chest and pull them off slowly!!"

Nightcrawler winced at the image. "I don't have your biscuits."

Lupa shoved her wolf-muzzle up to his face and sniffed, suspiciously. "Breathe."

He huffed at her, amused.

"Huh."

She let go of him. "You ate Scott's leftover Chinese food? He's gonna be mad…"

"I'm sure I fear your anger far more than Mr Summers'," returned Kurt, and his conviction was borne out as Lupa pounced on him again.

"Just because you haven't eaten them yet doesn't mean you don't have them!! Go fetch 'em, fuzzy."

"I told you," said Kurt, pushing her off him with ease and rising to his feet, "I don't have them."

"So how d'you explain the fact that they were stolen from my secret locked room? You know? The one with the heavy-duty door that only has one key and is unpickable? No-one else could have got in there without trashing the place, Mr Wagner."

"What about Kitty?"

"Kitty's out of town on a field trip. Nice try, though."

She grabbed him by the arm and marched him towards the house. "Back to the scene of the crime, Sherlock. If you're so innocent, you can explain to me how it was done…"

Kurt examined the door as Lupa stood behind him, tapping her foot impatiently. He ducked his head and carefully manoeuvred his thin, lanky frame inside the tiny room, tail lashing. 

"The lock wasn't picked," he said, eventually. "And the room does smell almost…smoky…smells like hot metal…"

Lupa glared. "So I can see why you would think I was to blame," Kurt continued, swinging the door to and fro and listening to the dangerous creaking that sounded as if the hinges were on the verge of snapping. He smiled, and the short indigo fur on his face ceased into velveteen lines. 

"I think I have an idea of who took your biscuits, anyway. Come on. We'll go to town and buy you some more, and then we'll see…"

Lupa bounced up the stairs to the attic, carrying a fresh bag of cookies and a tub of Baskin-Robbins. "Cookies for me, cookies for me…"

She placed the bag inside the room and shut and locked the door. "Save those for later."

Outside, on the roof, Kurt grinned and settled back to watch through the attic's one, dirty window. Surely it wouldn't be long to wait. Lupa bounded off down the stairs with apparently every intention of going to the library to study. 

And the biscuit-thief came. 

One hand held a chef's oxy-torch and gas canister: the other was empty. The miscreant approached the door with care from the hinged side and set the torch down delicately…

Kurt watched with a widening grin for a few more seconds, then spoke low into the CB on his wrist: "Lupa? Go."

"Hold it right there, dodgy biscuit-stealing person!"

Lupa skidded to a halt as the thief, startled, knocked the chef's torch to the floor. 

_Snikt._

"I'm disappointed in you, Logan," said Lupa, sighing melodramatically, "really I am."

"Aw, shucks," Logan ground out, "I thought you knew me better than that, kid. I'm bad. I'd take candy from a baby if the baby wasn't armed."

One claw, horribly sharp and thinner than the average credit card, slipped into the tiny gap between door and jamb. Wolverine drew it down, neatly severing the hinges of the door, and the door swung open on its lock. 

"Smooth," said Lupa, crossly, as Logan stepped inside easily, his height allowing him to miss the doorframe by several inches, lifted out the cookie bag with a raised-eyebrow smirk. "But how did you get it closed again?"

With a flourish, one claw was dipped into the hissing flame of the oxy. It soon began to glow and gave off a heavy, hot scent that made Lupa wrinkle her nose and cough. Wolverine pushed the door back into position and delicately wiggled the heated claw across the hinges, melting them back together. The door stood locked as before.

"It's not perfect," he said, "and they would have broken eventually. But it was worth it."

"How?" Lupa exploded. "How was it worth it? You can buy cookies in the store for one-ninety-five! Why the hell would you go to all this trouble?"

_Snakt. _

The claws, now cooled, fled back into Logan's fist. He raised one thick finger and tapped the side of Lupa's muzzle.

"'Cause you look so damn ugly when you get riled," he said, and put his hands over his ears as Lupa blew her top for the second time that day.


End file.
